


Of Dwarves and Deepstalkers

by alliterate



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: 5 Things, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 05:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3475670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliterate/pseuds/alliterate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four strange things Scout Harding has seen in her travels, and one she saw right in the Inquisition's own backyard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Dwarves and Deepstalkers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lackia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackia/gifts).



> Happy Wintersend, lackia! <3 I hope this is something like what you were looking for, and also that I didn't misinterpret the "coughcoughdalishcoughcough" at the end of your request — I was too enchanted by the idea of this ship to pass it up.

_1._

The thing about the Hinterlands — but that's not accurate, Harding realizes, even as she thinks it. The thing about _her parts of_ the Hinterlands is that there aren't many caves. Where she grew up, it was all farmlands, hilly and lush, and none of the shallow crevices she used as hiding places as a girl could by any stretch of the imagination be called a cave. 

_Cave_ means dark, gloomy, full of secret things. Her Hinterlands are wide open and candid, their surprises minimal.

The Storm Coast is different. The Storm Coast is wet and dark, more hidden spaces than open paths, and sometimes it seems like you can't swing your arm without finding some gaping hollow in a cliffside. It's tricky to scout, not so much because of the giant and the dragon — those, at least, are easy to avoid — as because the Coast twists and turns, drops away from you, forces you to scale its impossible heights. 

Her team marches on, though, surefooted and eager. It's hardly a _job_ , working with people like that: it's a pleasure.

Still, the caves are a problem. As a rule, they leave caves for the Inquisitor to explore, mark them on the map and move on, but there are places on the Coast where avoiding the caves is an impossibility — no way around but through the treacherous waters, and if they want to move on, they have to go through. Harding's scouting with Gordrin and Kurt when she encounters one such cave.

"No way over?" she asks Kurt.

He hops back down from the cliffside he'd been trying to climb. "No, ma'am," he says, dusting off his hands. "There aren't enough handholds up there. We'd just slide right back down."

She sighs and takes her bow in hand. "All right. In we go."

They have little time to hope that maybe this cave is one of those peaceful ones _not_ full of unholy creatures. No sooner are they inside the cave than Harding registers scratching and chattering sounds echoing around her, and soon something is entering her line of sight, something hulking and definitely not friendly. 

Whatever it is, the thing is _vile_. It's lizard-like and slimy, she sees as her eyes adjust to the light, and it's tall enough to reach her waist, with a ridged, pronged tail and two powerful-looking hind legs. It's the head that gets to her, though: it has a long neck with a narrow flap on either side, ending in a hideous, protruding mouth with teeth that put Harding wildly in mind of a sea-star.

She doubts, somehow, that this thing is as friendly as a sea-star. And slow as it's currently moving, it's definitely advancing on her.

Harding keeps her arrow trained on its head. "What," she says through gritted teeth, "is _that_?"

"That'd be a deepstalker, ma'am!" Kurt shouts from his position to her right, waving his sword to fend off a cluster of spiders.

She _has_ read the codex, she sees the resemblance, but— "Deepstalkers are supposed to be small!"

Gordrin, the asshole, actually laughs. "They usually are! You got one of the leaders!"

Harding looses the arrow. The thing dodges, suddenly speedy, and her arrow gets it in the shoulder. It keeps advancing. "Lucky me!" she shouts back. Her next arrow, landing firmly in its chest with a sickening _splat_ , does little to deter the deepstalker. It spits, missing her by inches. _Ugh._ "Why the _hell_ do dwarves want to live underground when things like this exist?"

There's a thud to her left as Gordrin knocks one of the normal-sized ones into the wall of the cave, and he laughs again. "I ask myself that every day of my life, chief!"

Good to know her fellow surfacers have her back. She looses one more arrow, and this one gets the thing right between the eyes — or what she thinks are its eyes. It goes down, and she pivots, aiming to shoot down one of the spiders trying to flank Kurt. It hisses and collapses.

When all the creatures are down, Gordrin makes his way over and claps Harding on the shoulder. "Should we move on?"

She nods, breathing a little heavily. The three of them make their way toward the dim light at the other end of the cave, but as they pass through a door-sized hole in the chamber, Harding turns back one last time to point at the deepstalker leader's corpse.

"For the record," she says, because she knows Gordrin and Kurt won't judge her, "I did not leave the Hinterlands for _that._ "

* * *

_2._

The Emprise du Lion is _cold_. It's cold, and windy, and full of Red Templars, and Harding should be more concerned about that last fact but right now she can't quite think beyond belief, deep in her bones, that her socks will never be dry again. She loves her job, but sometimes she hates her job. 

Still, all is well and good in terms of getting the work done until it's time to scout along the frozen river. She's with Vathra today, a young Dalish woman who, like Harding, left her home in response to the Inquisition's call and promise of adventure, but while Vathra walks sure and strong across the first bit of the river, every inch of Harding's farm girl upbringing is screaming at her to _get off the ice_. 

After her first few hesitant steps, though, Vathra turns to her and laughs.

"The ice is clear blue," she says, pointing down and smiling. "Means it's safe for walking. Nothing to worry about, boss."

Harding frowns a little, suddenly grateful to the brisk air for hiding her blush. "You're sure?" she asks, just to be safe.

"Sure as giants are tall," Vathra replies. 

It's her confident grin more than anything that reassures Harding. She likes Vathra; Vathra brooks no bullshit. Harding stands up a little straighter and walks on, more confident with each step that doesn't send her crashing through to a watery grave.

They walk on, staying clear of any sign of Red Templar activity. Every so often, they pause to let Harding scribble down a landmark on her map. The area is surprisingly bare, though, and they see little out of the ordinary. Harding's almost disappointed; she's itching for something to shoot or climb, or at least make note of for the Inquisitor.

That is, she's disappointed until they move south and she happens to glance upward, and gets an eyeful of a frozen, lovingly sculpted breasts.

Harding pauses in her tracks. "Well, those are unrealistic," she muses aloud, then internally kicks herself for being so unprofessional. She's about to apologize when Vathra stops, looks up, and laughs a rough, barking laugh. 

"Gives a whole new meaning to freezing your nipples off."

Harding, startled, breaks down laughing. It's the kind of laughter that hurts, almost, aching in her stomach as she doubles over, but it feels good, too: it warms her up, giggling over these ridiculous, icicle-covered breasts. When she catches her breath and straightens up, Vathra is smiling at her, looking pleased to have produced such a reaction.

After a moment, however, Vathra's smile drops away and she furrows her eyebrows. "Um, please don't tell the Inquisitor I said that," she says, her voice uncharacteristically nervous. Many of Harding's scouts idolize the Inquisitor, but she hadn't pegged Vathra for one of them. It's kind of cute.

"I'll leave it off the report," Harding promises. She might leave the statue off the map, as well: it's not much of a landmark, tucked away back here, and if nothing else, the Inquisitor will probably get a kick out of stumbling across it. 

She and Vathra move on.

* * *

_3._

Harding actually hears them arguing well before she's brought into it. It's hard not to: the Chargers are a boisterous company, the kind that don't know how to move through life quietly, and the door to the tavern _is_ wide open. She hears grumbling and raised voices and, more than once, the Iron Bull banging his impressive fist on a table and announcing that they would "just have to _deal_ with it." Whatever _it_ is.

She tunes them out after a while. The air is surprisingly warm for the season, and the tavern cook has opened the windows, leaving the heat from the kitchens to waft over her. It reminds Harding of home, but in a way that gets under her skin, makes her itch to get moving; she supposes she'll always be her mother's daughter, taking to downtime like a cat takes to water. Minaeve wanders by and waves at Harding as she passes, and Harding waves idly back.

A throat is cleared just behind her left shoulder, and Harding very carefully does not jump.

It's Krem, she finds, turning, the handsome one with the chair. When she meets his eyes, he smiles. "Scout Harding, isn't it?"

Harding nods. "And you're Krem. Or, uh, Lieutenant Aclassi?"

Krem's eyes crinkle at the corners. "Krem's fine. Scout Harding, I'm sorry to bother you with this, but my company and I, we've something of a problem."

"Oh?"

"Our lead archer's injured. Nothing rest won't fix, says the surgeon, never mind she's not the resting kind, but— well, the chief's got this new job for us, and it's time sensitive. And we need someone to cover us from a distance, in addition to our... um, our other archer."

Harding blinks. "I see."

"Scout Harding," Krem continues, "you're an archer, aren't you?"

She understands, finally, where this is going. The corners of her mouth tilt up a little, entirely of their own free will. "That I am."

"And are you busy for the next week or so?"

"As it happens, I'm on leave until the Inquisitor's back from the Oasis."

Krem's smile widens. "Then I think I have a job offer for you."

*

The job, it turns out, is a wyvern. 

The job is a wyvern; it's in the Approach; a nefarious-looking old man is paying them a lot of gold to get rid of it, but can't seem to say exactly where it is. Those are the parameters, Krem tells her, and she'll be getting Skinner's usual cut. (Not that she needs it. The Inquisition already pays her more gold than she ever saw in her previous life.)

To cover the widest ground, the Chargers split up. Krem puts Harding with the cute gangly one and the strong and silent one — Dalish and Grim, she learns. Grim walks ahead of them, hammer out and frown firmly in place, but Dalish trails back to fall in step with Harding.

"I like your bow," Dalish trills, eyes wide and curious. "It looks… sturdy."

Harding smiles at her. "It is. Dagna made it for me. She's got to be the best smith I've ever seen. Have you met her?"

Dalish shakes her head, and Harding thinks that's a shame. She doesn't know Dalish well, not at all, but she imagines they'd get along; she thinks it'd be hard for anyone not to like Dagna, or indeed for Dagna to dislike anyone.

They walk on for a while in silence. Relative silence, anyway: Dalish hums an off-key little tune as she goes. She also walks a little closer to Harding than is strictly necessary, but Harding hardly minds. She figured out even before she saw the staff that Dalish isn't an archer — when they shook hands, her fingers were smooth where Harding's are calloused, rough — but that doesn't stop her from being exactly Harding's type, with her long limbs and delicate hands, the sharp relief of her profile.

Now isn't exactly the time for flirting, though. She keeps her thoughts to herself and focuses on navigating the Approach's sandy hills, enjoying Dalish's presence at her side.

Eventually, they close in on a cavern, looming large and ominous in the middle distance. Dalish spots it about the same time Harding does, and says, "That looks promising." She raises her voice. "Grim, doesn't that look promising?"

Grim grunts, shrugging, but he changes course to head for the cavern.

Dalish smiles, looking entirely too cheerful about the whole thing. "Grim is not one for talking much," she informs Harding, who had already figured that out for herself.

"Probably interferes with the whole brooding prince thing he's got going," she says, and when Dalish laughs, she laughs hard, tossing her head back like Harding has told a grand joke.

Harding smiles to herself, bemused but pleased; she loves to make a pretty girl laugh. "Hey," she says, as they enter the cavern, "have you heard the one about the blacksmith and the barmaid?"

The cavern is huge, stretching on forever, and after a while Grim raises a hand to silence them. Smart, Harding thinks — they probably shouldn't alter the wyvern to their presence, if the wyvern is, indeed, here. As they finally pass through the cavern into a sheltered clearing, Harding notices two things in quick succession: 

First, the job isn't a wyvern, it's _two_ wyverns. 

Second, the wyverns haven't noticed them yet; they're… fighting? One is on top of the other, and there are growls, and—

"Oh, no," Harding says, finally understanding. She turns, unthinking, as if to give the wyverns privacy. _That's_ something she really could've gone her whole life without seeing. 

Beside her, Dalish giggles, high and shrill. "I guess even wyverns get to have a little fun sometimes," she says gleefully, touching Harding's arm.

Something flutters a little, high and untimely in Harding's chest. She rolls her eyes at herself, draws her bow, and turns, ready to break up the wyverns' party.

* * *

_4._

"Is that," Ridley says, then pauses. He squints at something past Harding's left shoulder. "What is that?"

"What's what?" She turns, shading her eyes to follow his line of sight. All she sees is grass and hill. The Graves are good if you're looking for grass and hills.

"Something's shining over there," he says, and trots over to the hill the three of them — she, Ridley, and Helga — had just walked past. As he leans in to examine something on the hillside, Harding finally sees it: something is, indeed, glinting in the sunlight.

Ridley picks it up, whatever it is. "Huh," he says loudly, and Harding moves to join him. When she gets to his side, she leans in.

The thing is a pendant necklace, it turns out, a beautiful one. It's finely wrought in gold, hanging on a heavy gold chain, with delicate-looking patterns twining around the pendant. The pendant itself is clear and oval-shaped, with something amber-coloured inside — something amber-coloured that's _moving_ inside, she realizes, like a colourful fog swirling slowly inside the glass.

The overall effect is stunning. Harding almost feels like they shouldn't be touching it. She shakes the feeling away.

"Well," Ridley says, "isn't that something."

"It's _gorgeous_ ," Helgra breathes, from behind Harding's shoulder.

Ridley brushes a piece of grass from the pendant's face. "Why do you suppose folk just drop their jewellery out in the open like that?" he asks. "If this were mine, I'd keep better track of it."

Harding shrugs. "Beats me." Lace Harding is many things — archer, daughter, damn good dancer — but birdbrained she is not. It baffles her, how often they just stumble across someone's family heirloom or prized possession. "It looks like it might be magic," she adds, taking a closer look at the fog still curling inside. "Think we should bring it back and have Dagna take a look?"

"Your call," Ridley says, but he hands it over. Harding tucks it away in her pocket and gives them the signal to move on.

The next few hours are fruitful, but largely uneventful. They make note of a logging stand and some promising campsites, even come across another one of those weird Tevinter-looking globe things, but there's nothing like the previous day's encounter with a field full of giants. (That's another thing Lace Harding is not: a giant wrangler.) Overall, it's shaping up to be a good day.

They're just passing the opening to a cave, with Ridley scribbling the location down on the map, when Helga trips over a rock in her path and falls. She catches herself, but one hand lands on a nearby tree stump, and when she sits back, she clutches that hand, cursing to herself.

"Hey, boss," she calls out, "I think I've got a splinter. Do you still have those tweezers?"

Harding frowns. "I think so." She goes to rummage through her pockets for the tweezers she keeps just for circumstances like these, but her fingers close around the pendant, heavy and in the way. She'd half forgotten it was even there. Harding pulls it out of her pocket and sets it down on the offending stump, then turns back to Helga, returning her hand to her pocket.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then three things happen all at once: there's a loud cracking sound from just behind Harding; Ridley shouts, "Scout Harding, look out!"; and something grabs Harding around the waist, something hard and _strong_ , and lifts her up into the air.

It's a tree branch, Harding realizes wildly, three feet up into the air and counting. Nothing grabbed her; a tree branch just exploded from the stump and _grew around her_. 

She struggles against it, but can't quite shake herself loose. Ridley and Helga are shouting something down below her, but the sound is too faint, carried off by the wind. Harding leans to one side and wriggles a hand down between the tree branch and her armor, and pulls the knife from her belt. The branch is growing, thickening, but it's still thin enough to hack through it with a few good strikes.

She lands with a heavy thud. When she rights herself, she's breathing hard, and her hair has come loose in messy tendrils around her face. Ridley and Helga are staring at her, like they can't believe what just happened either.

Harding turns to look at the scene behind her. A tree, a full-grown _tree_ , has grown into place where the stump had been just a moment before. Its branches were still growing, but more slowly now, reaching their full height and settling into place. As she watches, leaves begin to sprout from the branches, bright and heavy.

The pendant — the _amulet_ — is nowhere to be found. Harding supposes that's what the cracking sound was. Although that could have been the tree; who knows what sounds a tree makes, growing at that speed?

She shrugs to herself. "So," she says, brushing the grass from her hands and turning back to Ridley and Helga. "I guess we're not bringing that amulet in for Dagna after all."

Ridley stares at her, and Helga laughs.

* * *

_5._

It's two weeks or so after the tree incident before Harding finally gets another day to breathe. She had returned from the Emerald Graves just in time for the Inquisitor to come trudging back in, covered in road dust and looking a little worse for wear. Harding and her team were sent straight back out then to explore the Hissing Wastes.

Harding is _really_ not a fan of the Wastes. They're huge and cold and empty, and empty is one thing she's never quite gotten used to. Still, what the Inquisitor wants to explore, the Inquisitor gets a thorough report on.

Now that they're back, Harding finds herself yearning for the warmth of the tavern. For all she likes to stand outside it, trade pleasantries with all the people going in and out, she spends little time inside the Herald's Rest; most days, the business of it, the noise and the dim lights, they're a bit much for her. Today, though, after day after day exploring all that sandy space, she thinks that crowd is just what she needs.

So after she's gone to her chambers, dropped off her pack and washed the dust from her face, Harding goes to the tavern. She orders a drink from Cabot — dwarven ale, one thing her people definitely got right — and checks the sign-up list for her dance lessons. Dagna's signed up, now, and Krem too. There'll be a good showing, once she finally gets the time to teach them. She hopes that will be soon: she misses dancing, misses evenings spent twirling around the field with her neighbour's daughter, and teaching makes her feel useful. She turns and leans her back against the post her notice is stuck to.

It's then that she spots Dalish sitting alone in a dark back corner, head bent over a box in her lap. Harding can't quite see what's inside from this angle, but she can hear Dalish cooing, and Harding finds herself smiling at the scene.

She makes her way over. Dalish replaces the lid on the box before Harding is in front of her, but when she glances up and spots Harding, a grin spreads over her face. She waves Harding over, as if Harding weren't already on her way.

"Hello!" she says when Harding stands before her. "Look at what I have!"

She opens the lid, and inside is— Harding nearly recoils. Inside is a _deepstalker_ , a small one, even an infant by the looks of it. It's sleeping nested in a bed of straw, its ugly mouth open and emitting slow, steady breaths. When Harding looks up again, confused, Dalish is beaming.

"I'm raising her!" she says, and she looks soproud Harding has to restrain herself from laughing. "We think we can train her to fight with us. No one has ever done it before!" ( _I wonder why,_ Harding thinks.) "Would you like to touch her?"

"Er, no thanks," Harding says, her voice only slightly strained. 

Dalish just closes the lid to the box, still smiling. She tucks it under her chair, then turns her huge eyes on Harding once again. "Isn't she lovely?"

Again, Harding chokes the laughter bubbling inside her. She says, carefully, "She's certainly interesting!"

The deepstalker is, in truth, as disgusting as she's ever found them — Harding _really_ does not want to touch it — but Dalish seems so keen on it, looks so adorably fond, that Harding finds her own overwhelming response is one of affection. How did this become her life, she wonders, that she flirts with girls who keep deepstalkers for pets? 

Then again, she had passed through the stables on the way here and found herself face to face with a horned, purple nug more than twice her size. She supposes there are stranger things.

A hand on her arm jolts her from her reverie. Dalish says, with a cheerful quirk to her lips, "May I buy you your next drink?"

She looks so hopeful, her smile wide and bright, and Harding feels herself relax. So what if she isn't in quite the same world she lived in a year ago? She may still be a bit lost at sea with the deepstalker hiding beneath Dalish's chair, but this, this she knows how to do.

She puts her free hand over Dalish's, smiles, and says, "I'd like that."


End file.
